Army Composition, Gear Stacks & Strategies

[WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD]

This strategy requires some form of speed enhancement to really work well. On smaller battle fields it should work well without speed enhancement. It will work to some degree on any map without speed, but not as well.
Also it's only viable for enemy armies that are mostly flightless with fewer action points.

If no speed boosting items have been discovered, these two options are reliably available:
Mana Accelerator used every round it will help to cast a Phantom every round as well. But will use up a Rage Skill casting.
Haste spell will use up a precious spell round. However Haste III only costs 10 mana and gives your entire army +2 speed for 4 rounds. With Mage class higher magic, Haste III + Phantom can be done in round 1.

Speed boosting items (if discovered) will save you spells and rage skills for other uses:
Belt of the Victor (artifact) provides +1 speed to all units but is a very hard to find composite item included in the gift bag. (special mod needs to be installed)
Skates (boots) provide +1 speed to all pedestrians on snow terrain. (gift bag mod)
Boots of the Pilgrim (boots) provide +1 speed to the slowest troop
Ogre Sandals (boots) provide +1 speed to Ogres, Giants & Trolls


The Ogre set is excellent for this strategy and Giants in general.

--- Ogre Set ---
+2500 Leadership (allows 1 more Giant and helps for the next one)

Ogre's Club (weapon) (finding 2 of these is really nice for the 40% damage increase)
+4 Attack
+20% Damage for Ogre's, Troll's & Giant's

Ogre Sandals (boots)
+2 Defense
+1 Speed of Ogre's, Troll's & Giant's (this is the real sweet deal, lucky if you find 2)

Ogre's Belt (belt)
+4 Defense (many better items can fill this slot, but with the set +4 def. is pretty good)

--- end Ogre Set ---

Other items of special benefit to Giants:

Horn of King Borg (artifact)
+5 Attack to all Dwarfs
–10% Leadership requirement for all dwarfs (includes Giants)
–1 Initiatives to your humans and elves

Fighting Pole-axe (weapon) (sorry don't know the actual in game name)
+20% Damage for fighters with melee weapons

Drill (weapon) (always found after defeating the Driller boss)
+25 Physical damage
-1 Initiative
Only affects fighters with melee weapons


Army Composition:
The idea being the mages all have pretty good range attack. Arch-Mage can Magic Shield the main Giant stack. Demonologist, Druid & Royal Griffin all summon free support units. RG is a fast and powerful tank unit.
Several good substitutions might be: Shaman for totem of life to bring defense and healing to the invading Giants + Dancing Axes for healing and offensive strike. Hunters for strong range attack. Trolls for super tank, especially if holding the Ogre set items. Dragons for fast powerful tanks.




The Power of Phantom Giants Strategy


(1) First activate running for Giants, move Giants towards enemy army but don't use the last action point.



(2) Cast Phantom on the Giants and place the phantom Giants 1 space in front of the real Giants so they start as close to the enemy army as possible.
(3) Instruct real Giants to do Earthquake.



(4) Activate running for phantom Giants, move giants toward enemy army, but save the last action point.



(5) Instruct phantom Giants to use Earthquake for their last action point.
If there aren't too many obstacles on the field it's possible to have the phantom Giants in the midst of the enemy army for the 1st Earthquake in the 1st round. If you keep your real army back the enemy army will most likely target the phantom Giants, saving your real army and giving you more rounds to wear them down. (in this photo the enemy is weak so I'm just charging)



(5)At this point it's possible to continue to Phantom the real Giant stack and flood the enemy army with Giant tanks and Earthquakes.
Use Mana Accelerator to maintain mana.



Look at that angry Polar Bear, he doesn't like earthquakes!
In this scene all enemies are attacking the phantom Giants and ignoring the real army which is a bit further back.



The Phantom Giants work really well in this battle against all Hyenas.
Granted this is a very easy battle and almost anything would work well.



Here is a scenario using Mana Accelerator to get the real big Giant stack as close to the enemy as possible before 1st Earthquake.

Giants use run and move into place saving 1 action point. Phantom is carefully placed first. Mana Accelerator is carefully placed 2nd.



Real large Giant stack grabs Mana Accelerator gaining 2 action points (this is later stage MA upgrade, early has 1 action point). Moves 1 more space toward the enemy lines (having gained a total of 2 move spaces plus 1 extra action point remaining). Main large stack uses Earthquake with impressive results.


Hyenas make their move. Luckily most went for the Executioner, the others just ran up to the real Giant stack and did nothing, some attacked the phantom Giants. Now phantom Giants Earthquake.



3rd phantom Giants are made. So far the Giants and phantoms have done most of the work. Ideally I should have had Arch-Mages (Magic Shield) and other mage/range units supporting them. The Dragons and Troll did nothing the whole match but move around or defend.

[loreangelicus]

How about doing something for the Emerald Green Dragons? IMHO they are the best unit to Phantom since all you need is the initial level 3 Phantom cost of 25 mana, and the Phantom EGD would recover that for you by using its mana blast ability; you don't even need mana accelerator to fuel the steady stream of Phantom-ed EGDs.

[WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD]

Originally Posted by loreangelicus

How about doing something for the Emerald Green Dragons? IMHO they are the best unit to Phantom since all you need is the initial level 3 Phantom cost of 25 mana, and the Phantom EGD would recover that for you by using its mana blast ability; you don't even need mana accelerator to fuel the steady stream of Phantom-ed EGDs.

Yeah that mana shock is quite nice. I'll try to use the Emerald Green sometime. I've just never used them. I only used them in the early game when they were the only dragon available. Their speed of 7 is too low for me and if using a dragon I really like the benefit of the double hit from Red & Black fire, I totally exploit that. Plus R&B are much tougher imo.

I have a question about how the Emerald Green Dragon mana shock works. It seems to get more mana the more dragons are in the stack. But how much is the mana acquisition affected by the quantity of units that are shocked? Meaning, if I can only land between 2 stacks of enemy units will it give me less mana than if I got a situation where the mana shock hits 4 different stacks at the same time? Or how about if 1 of the enemy stacks being shocked only has very few units in it and the damage done by the shock far exceeds the total life of that stack, does it still give the same quantity of mana from that stack?

Probably the big turn-off for the mana shock, which is one big reason I don't use the EGD that much is it seems like sometimes I get like 1-2 mana from it even if other times I get as much as 24 mana (the most I can remember getting).

I wonder if I should put the question as a new topic in case some people don't read this far down in this one...
It would really be nice to know the exact and complete mechanics for how the the EGD mana shock works.

[WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD]

see pic

[Metathron]

I love fire flood. Also, emeralds come in handy when you want to get that one stray stack back in line.

[Zechnophobe]

No, please don't start more threads just for one question. It tends to clog up the boards, making it hard to find things. People will go to page 2 to answer a question on here, don't worry .

As for mana source ability for EGDs, it is dependant on the total damage dealt. So if you have more than one target, it will do more total damage, and gain more mana. If you have more EGD's, it will do more damage.

If you finish off a stack of one peasant though, it will do just that little bit of mana, and net minimal mana. You can often get 3 or 4 stacks with it late game, and is a great way to fuel a combat, and is the rival of the black and red special abilities. Less damage, but can often fill your mana to the brim!

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD

Yeah that mana shock is quite nice. I'll try to use the Emerald Green sometime. I've just never used them. I only used them in the early game when they were the only dragon available. Their speed of 7 is too low for me and if using a dragon I really like the benefit of the double hit from Red & Black fire, I totally exploit that. Plus R&B are much tougher imo.

I have a question about how the Emerald Green Dragon mana shock works. It seems to get more mana the more dragons are in the stack. But how much is the mana acquisition affected by the quantity of units that are shocked? Meaning, if I can only land between 2 stacks of enemy units will it give me less mana than if I got a situation where the mana shock hits 4 different stacks at the same time? Or how about if 1 of the enemy stacks being shocked only has very few units in it and the damage done by the shock far exceeds the total life of that stack, does it still give the same quantity of mana from that stack?

Probably the big turn-off for the mana shock, which is one big reason I don't use the EGD that much is it seems like sometimes I get like 1-2 mana from it even if other times I get as much as 24 mana (the most I can remember getting).

I wonder if I should put the question as a new topic in case some people don't read this far down in this one...
It would really be nice to know the exact and complete mechanics for how the the EGD mana shock works.

Well, I wasn't quite exactly comparing the EGDs to reds or blacks. I just think that they are the best units to Phantom since you don't usually need more mana to fuel the stream of Phantom EGDs.

I'm early in my game and I haven't used Phantom-EGDs yet, but in KBTL I had the lineup demoness-inquisitor-EGD-shaman-demon for my impossible Paladin game and pretty much dominated enemies (7-day game/no-loss) using the Phantom-EGD tactic. As with the Giant tactic you showed, just move the EGDs forward and leave one move space left (and in KBTL they almost always moved first due to relative high initiative) then cast Phantom on them. Move the Phantom EGD to the enemy lines and WAIT. Enemies will swarm and pummel them, but due to high defense they will survive; do mana blast.

Late-game I was getting back 18-35 mana with the initial mana blasts. And this was in KBTL where a Paladin could only Phantom less than 50% of the original EGD stack; in KBAP you even have the Summoner skill to increase this.

The thing is, you only do this the first 3-4 rounds or so. By then, you would have decimated the enemies and there really is no need to Phantom more in since they would get back less mana due to less enemies.

But you are still correct, in KBAP there are other tactics, and better ones at that. Compared to KBTL, KBAP increased the stats of level 4-5 units, which is why red and blacks are usable now (they had pathetic stats-to-leadership ration in KBTL, and the burning mechanic is better in KBAP). I currently use another tactic though, black knights-repair droids-guard droids-repair droids; easy no-loss battles for my impossible warrior game (so far).

[WhYdOyOuThInKtHaThApPeNeD]

A highly effective strategy I found for Thomas Torkve.

Located in the underground cave on Elon called 'River of Life' he's always got an army of a lot of Paladins and Inquisitors.
As far as I've seen he never casts any offensive damage magic. I always saw him cast Divine Armor on his Paladins and sometimes a Battle Cry. Knowing this is really helpful for building a good strategy against him.
If enough of his stacks are damaged in the first round he'll have most of his Paladins & Inquisitors casting resurrection magic.

Flooding him with summoned units using Druids, Royal Griffins & Demonologists worked well for me. Royal Thorns, Dryads & Demons should work well too but i haven't tried. Despite the +150% power of Paladins & Inquisitors against demon class units I didn't find this to be any trouble.

Phantoming Royal Griffins and flooding Angelic Guards works really well. Angelic Guards have 50% resistance to physical attack which the Paladins are doing and 25% to magic which the Inquisitors are doing. Royal Griffins have 50% resistance to magic so have them take out the Inquisitors. Royal Griffins on the Inquisitors will prevent them from range attacking your mages.

Even though the Paladins still take out quite a few Angelic Guards per hit they can't keep up with the flood if Mana Accelerator is used to guarantee a Royal Griffin phantom / Angelic Guard summon used every round.

Giants added to this worked well for me too. Phantoming Giants kept the Paladins quite busy and the Earthquakes were nice.

With Druids and Demonologist summons reloading every few rounds and phantom Royal Griffins summoning Angelic Guards the Inquisitors die quite early, the paladins become totally surrounded on all sides with reinforcements building up faster than they can eliminate them. Mages attacking with range on top of this. Thomas Tvorke is very easy. Granted I played him after I had gotten quite strong, I think this should work even when weaker.

[Metathron]

Did you obtain that many demonologists through sacrifice?

[Smash]

Depend of game you can buy as much as you need. Inc are still better for res.

There is dwarf weapon that lower leadership cost by -15% iirc.
Phantom spell plus only PAladins won me all maps fights in verona with no loss ><.